Thermal Treatment of Wood

I got a plan for a toy dump truck and it showed using thermally treated or heat treated wood. If done right, it can darken a wood anywhere from a light caramel to almost a dark brown.

Has anyone have any experience either heat treating wood or working with heat treated wood.

I read some articles about the commercial heat treatment and they use a couple of different furnaces including a vacuum furnace and others a combination of steam and heat. The toy dump truck website just said to use an oven a 400°F for 30-60 minutes.

I concerns about cutting this wood, glueing it and even finishing it as it will come out of the oven with zero moisture. I probably would have to let it re-adjust to some moisture level.

I am hoping that someone has some helpful ideas about this. Worst case is that I will need to make some pieces of a couple of kinds of wood and try the heat treatment with some variation in time. I do have some concerns about using my wife’s oven.